***A Hot & Sweaty Quick Fix For Cream Carpet *** (Rug Doctor Mighty Pro)

Member Name: malibu_jenny

Product:	Rug Doctor Mighty Pro
Date:	09/08/09 (546 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does the job it promises.

Disadvantages: Fairly expensive and physically demanding.

Drinks had been spilt, Little Nephew's Play-Doh had dried to small chunks and the Dog was occasionally incontinent. The cream carpet throughout The Boyfriend's flat was looking tired for many reasons. An short notice flat inspection was looming and The Boyfriend sat with his head in his hands.....He decided that vigorous hoovering and dabbing at stains with wet kitchen roll was not going to be enough this time; salvation would have to come in the form of the Rug Doctor.

A great deal of searching on the internet hadn't given us any guide prices for hiring it from Homebase or Morrissons, so we'd chosen to try and find the nearest supplier and go with that. Our local Budgens didn't feature on the store locator, but they had the poster and therefore almost certainly the machine. True enough, it was hanging on the wall with a choice of cleaning fluids. No prices on display again (why is the cost of Rug Doctor such a closely guarded secret??) but we paid £20 to hire the machine, £14.99 for the cleaning fluid and £2.99 for the stain spray. Plus a £20 deposit.

The staff there didn't know how to work it, but instructions were provided in the net bag of accessories and how hard could it be? We'd seen a foul-mouthed Scotsman demonstrate it on youtube and some QVC style clip on the rug doctor website. There was even an e-how on how to clean with the Rug Doctor. We'd asked and the internet had provided. Using the wheels attached, we tilted it and rolled it to the car; the handle folds down so getting it in the boot is no problem.

Arriving home, we mixed the cleaning solution. A word of warning here, this stuff is nasty! I would strongly recommend wearing plastic gloves, getting someone to look after kids and pets and tying plastic bags over your shoes. If you have a throwaway plastic measuring jug, use it and sling it afterwards. Failing that, mark the levels using water on a large plastic bottle that you can bin après cleaning. It smells a bit like lemony puke, so open a window or two if you can. You need to hoover the house with your normal vacuum cleaner and treat any stains with the stain spray before you can begin. I liberally squirted it over a patch of splatters.

We were doing the hallway and living room and started at the front door. You have to fill the lower chamber with cleaning solution and check that it's set to carpets and not upholstery. The handle is similar in design to bicycle handlebars, with a central red button. You switch the machine on and then drag it backwards while pressing the button down.

The Boyfriend did a swipe, but I got impatient and thought I could do it better. Taking over, I found that pulling it slowly along seems to get the best result but the most foam. The instructions said if there was foam then we should buy Rug Doctor anti-foam solution and add this to the mixture - what a load of rubbish - it's their machine, their expensive carpet cleaner and we weren't going to be conned into paying for yet another product. The foam was no fault of ours. Anyway, I discovered that if you let go of the red button, the thing just becomes a powerful hoover and you can suck all the foam up before it sinks in. As this neither damaged the carpet or destroyed the machine, it worked fine for us. (Disclaimer: if you do not live in rented accommodation and have paid good money for your carpet, I take no responsibility for the foam hoovering method and you test it at your own risk)

The machine is pretty noisy; I employed the ear defenders issued to us at work and when I tried it without it hurt! The weight isn't too bad - no heavier than pulling for example a half full supermarket trolley. I didn't ache at all the next day.

The carpet was indeed minging and although it said not to go over the same patch twice and to have a maximum of two inches overlap as you cleaned, we totally ignored this. Going over the same patches around six times dragged the dirt out and left the carpet an acceptable colour. Once or twice was sufficient in 'low traffic' areas but useless outside the kitchen door. Where I'd squirted the stain remover, even marks that had been there before he moved in were shifted. Annoyingly, the bulk of the machine makes it hard to reach the areas next to the wall, so we had stripes of cream carpet showing through the dirt in the centre and greyer areas in the difficult places.

We carried on into the evening with the furniture piled high and a constant battle to stop MyDogs from running in and lying on the wet carpet. His hair came up from the carpet in clumps and even a burn mark left by The Boyfriend's naughty dad was no match for this thing. We tipped buckets of filthy black water down the toilet and then had to drag the dog away to stop him drinking it. We were so engrossed we even missed the Hotel Inspector. Eventually we stood back and surveyed our handiwork.

The stripy marks were a little worrying, but after the carpet had had a couple of days to dry out and we'd gone over it again with the hoover, this effect vanished. The drying out certainly took its time; we probably made the carpet wetter than we should have by going over it so many times. Obviously shoes were banned on the cleaned carpet, but The Boyfriend kept soaking the bottom of his socks as a result (I wore flip flops in the house). By the day of the visit, the carpet looked amazing for the hour that it needed to.

Some weeks on, it has to be said that cleaning the carpet has destroyed any ability it had to repel dirt, which now collects in stripes. Overall, it was far more effective than any of the other carpet cleaners we've tried and The Boyfriend has plans to hire it again when he moves out in order to get the deposit back, but owing to the costs involved it's not something we'd use regularly.

Summary: Worth a try if you need an emergency doctor in the house!

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Cleaning/Maintenance: